PopMatters Picks:

The Best Music of 2001

By PopMatters Music Staff

At long last we appear to be at the end of teen pop dominance in the US. Rock returned in a big way with sell-out Radiohead concerts from coast to coast, The Strokes emerging as critical darlings, and the tried-and-true rock formula of monster guitar bands like Creed storming the Billboard charts. While dance and hip-hop had relatively weak years, a few near masterpieces emerged with The Avalanches’ Since I Left You and Jay-Z’s The Blueprint. Meanwhile, Radiohead’s sound continued to loom large over the UK pop scene, as bands such as Travis and Coldplay continued to grow in popularity and the “sensitive boy” sounds of Turin Brakes, Starsailor, and Kings of Convenience emerged as a bonafide scene. Our critics chose many of these (minus Creed) as among the best music of the year. Then there were the old critical stalwarts—Bob Dylan, Björk, Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams—that placed very high in our writers’ eyes.